#11
Years ago, C-Rations had a piece of candy in them referred to as a "John Wayne bar". You have to be as tough as John Wayne to bite into it. Canned 'beans and weenies' were called beens and something else also.... but I forget :-)

[Shabelle] At least two people were bumped off in Mogadishu overnight by unidentified gangs, the latest in string of coordinated killings in the capital for the last few months.

Eyewitnesses said assailants armed with pistols have killed a soldier and a civilian at Turcaye village inside the volatile Huriwa district, north of Mogadishu on Thursday night at about 9pm local time and fled from the shooting zone.

The motive and the identity of the assassins were not established yet by the authority in the area. Such incidents have been on the rise as a new federal government took the helm of the horn of Africa strife-town country.

Following the killings Somali government forces mounting in pick-ups have moved in the area and searched all houses to arrest the killers, according to the local residents.

[Al Ahram] Bahraini police potted a 16-year-old Shiite on Friday as security forces attempted to prevent protesters from joining weekly prayers called for by the opposition, Al-Wefaq group said.

Ali Radhi was killed as he headed to the village of Diraz, west of Manama, to attend prayers led by Shiite spiritual leader Sheikh Issa Qassim, answering a call by Al-Wefaq, the main Shiite opposition formation said on its Twitter page.

It was not immediately clear how Radhi was killed, but the opposition said police used tear gas against the worshippers.

[Yemen Post] A tribal leader and a former jihadist in Afghanistan, Tariq Al-Fadhali, has appealed to lift a siege laid to him by fighters of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Abyan....a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...

Al-Fadhali told Al-Masdar Online that the siege resulted in suffering to his family, dubbing it as illegal.

He reiterated that fighters of the Popular Resistance Committees still surround his home, appealing to help him bring food and medicine to his family.

Sources of PRC told Al-Masdar Online that al-Fadhali is still under the siege and that they will allow a doctor to go to al-Fadhali's house.

Fighters of PRC have been surrounding al-Fadhali inside his home since last Monday and accusing him of affiliation to Al-Qaeda. A tribal leader of Abyan, Tariq Al-Fadhali, was given a 24 ultimatum to surrender himself after fighters of the Popular Resistance Committees encircled him inside his house in Zinjibar of Abyan.

Al-Fadhali who returned to Zinjibar on Monday after military commanders helped him to come back insisted that he would not surrender himself.

He had left Zinjibar of Abya after festivities escalated between the army and al-Qaeda cut-throats in last June.

Military sources said that the commander of the 115th brigade was suspended on ground of allowing al-Fadhali to return to Abyan.

Al-Fadhali, who is a son of a former sultan of Abyan, is accused of inciting against leaders and cadres of the Yemeni Socialist Party.

The General Secretariat of YSP had dubbed him as al-Qaeda terrorist and asking the authorities to swiftly arrest and prosecute him.

[An Nahar] A Pakistain MP escaped an liquidation attempt on Friday when a bomb planted in his shoe went kaboom! as he put them on outside a mosque after prayers, officials said.

The blast in Dera Bugti, about 500 kilometers east of Quetta, capital of the restive province of Balochistan...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it..., maimed 12 people, but their injuries were not life-threatening, police and local officials said.

Ahmedan Bugti, a politician with the Pakistain Moslem League-Q party, which is part of the ruling national coalition, left his shoes outside the mosque while he was offering Friday prayers, provincial home secretary Akbar Durrani told Agence La Belle France Presse.

Someone planted an bomb in one of them which detonated as he put the shoe back on.

"Bugti's leg was badly maimed, a helicopter has been arranged to fly him to Quetta," Durrani said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Balochistan is plagued by Islamist militancy, sectarian violence between majority Sunnis and minority Shiite Moslems and a separatist insurgency.

[Dawn] The government of Sindh has placed a ban on riding double in Bloody Karachi...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... and Khairpur as part of its security measures ahead of the holy month of Muharram starting next week.

The ban will come into effect from midnight Friday and will stay in place until Muharram 11, according to a notification issued by the Sindh Home Ministry. A ban on riding double had already been imposed in Hyderabad earlier this week.

Dr. Ayman al-Sahbani of Gaza's Shifa hospital said fatalities were all civilian and children were among those injured. Witnesses described an explosion followed by tank and machine gun fire, reported AP.

Witnesses also told Lebanon's Naharnet that militants had fired a rocket at an Israeli vehicle, reportedly provoking the deadly return fire from Israel. Naharnet cited Hamas' emergency services spokesman, Yahya Khader, as confirming that two people had been killed and saying six of those wounded had been seriously hurt.

The Israeli military has not commented on the incident, but AP said they were investigating.

[An Nahar] A Sri Lankan man who was bumped off in Gay Paree was Friday identified as Nadarajah Mathinthiran, a former Tamil Tiger commander who had been convicted in La Belle France of extortion and raising funds for terrorism.

Mathinthiran, who was born in 1963, was rubbed out on Thursday evening as he came out of the headquarters of the Tamil Coordination Committee in La Belle France (CCTF), an organization regarded as a front for what remains of the Tigers.

The assassin expeditiously departed at a goodly pace and has not been jugged... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
Judicial sources said there was no evidence to link Mathinthiran's killing to his past political activities.

Mathinthiran was sentenced to five years in prison in February following his conviction in a Gay Paree court for extortion, financing terrorism and membership of a criminal gang as part of a broader investigation into racketeering in the Sri Lankan expatriate community.

As he had already served more than three years in prison after first being jugged... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... in 2007, Mathinthiran was able to do a deal with the authorities that avoided him being placed back behind bars.

[Al Ahram] At least 20 Syrian soldiers were killed on Friday in fighting over the Ras al-Ain border post, one of only two crossings on the Turkish border still in regime hands, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Fighting over the post left at least 16 Syrian soldiers and 10 rebels dead on Thursday, the Observatory said, and Ankara said some 8,000 refugees had fled the area into Turkey overnight.

[An Nahar] At least 114 people were killed in violence across Syria on Friday as thousands of anti-regime protesters erupted into the streets, monitors said.

The Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists on the ground, said regime forces killed at least 90 people in several regions.

Thirty people were killed in Deir Ezzor in the east, 16 in Damascus...The capital of Iran's Syrian satrapy... and its countryside, 13 in Aleppo...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... in the north, eight in Daraa in the south, eight in the central province of Hama, six in the central province of Homs, six in the northwestern Idlib, one in al-Raqqa in the northeast, one in the neighboring al-Hasakeh and one in Quneitra which is located in the small part of the Golan Heights that is not occupied by Israel, the LCC said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 12 non-combatants were killed in shelling of a village in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, with a video released by activists showing bloodied corpses, including at least one of a child, lying in the middle of a road.

Warplanes were meanwhile flying over Damascus to bomb targets in rebel-held suburbs, an Agence La Belle France Presse correspondent said, and heavy kabooms could be heard around the capital in the early morning.

Some of the heaviest fighting saw at least 20 Syrian soldiers killed over the Ras al-Ain border post, one of only two crossings on the Turkish border still in regime hands, the Observatory said.

Fighting over the post left at least 16 Syrian soldiers and 10 rebels dead on Thursday, the Observatory said, and forced thousands to flee.

Meanwhile,...back at the Hubba Hubba Club, Nunzio had his hands full of angry bleached blonde... a car boom outside a mayor's office in the town of Muadamiyat al-Sham south of Damascus killed four civilians, according to the Britannia-based rights group.

A woman was among those killed in the town, about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the Syrian capital.

Despite the raging violence, thousands of protesters rallied on Friday, with many mocking Assad's "live and die" remarks.

"Bashar, you will die in Syria, but you won't be buried in the ground, you will be thrown in the dustbin of history!" read one sign held by protesters in the central city of Hama.

On Thursday, 142 people were killed in violence across the country, including 56 civilians, said the Britannia-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and medics on the ground.

Among the heaviest festivities on Thursday were battles for control of the mainly Kurdish northeastern town of Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border that killed 16 soldiers and 10 rebels, according to the Observatory.

A Turkish foreign ministry official told AFP that 8,000 refugees had fled to Turkey from the area overnight and that six Turkish civilians had been maimed by shots from across the border.

[An Nahar] More than 30 Syrian soldiers and rebels have been killed in festivities over the past week in a demilitarized zone of the Golan Heights facing Israeli-held territory, a monitoring group reported on Friday.

Israel's deputy prime minister Moshe Yaalon, meanwhile, warned Damascus...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat... it would act to defend its illusory sovereignty if the fighting continued to spill over into the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army and rebels have clashed in the Briqa, Bir Ajam and al-Hersh regions of Quneitra province.

Three rebels and a soldier died on Friday, the Britannia-based group's director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse, raising to more than 30 killed on the two sides in the past week.

Quneitra province, southwest of Damascus, incorporates the Golan Heights, of which a part is occupied and annexed by Israel, which has been officially in a state of war with Syria since its 1967 seizure of the territory.

Yaalon's comments on his Twitter account came a day after three stray mortar rounds fired from Syria hit the occupied Golan.

"We see the Syrian regime as responsible for what is happening along the border," said Yaalon, a senior cabinet minister and former armed forces chief of staff.

"If we see that it spills over in our direction, we know how to defend the citizens and the illusory sovereignty of the State of Israel," said the minister.

"The other side has received a lot of messages recently and until now, has acted accordingly in Syria. I hope that in this incident too, there will be someone who takes this in hand."

The three mortar rounds which struck the Golan on Thursday were the latest in a string of incidents in which fire has spilled across the ceasefire line onto the Israeli side.

On Monday, an Israeli military vehicle patrolling the buffer zone was hit by gunfire, with the army acknowledging it was caused by "stray bullets."

No one was injured but the incident prompted an Israeli complaint to the United Nations...a formerly good idea gone bad... Security Council in which it described the gunfire as a "grave violation" of a 1974 agreement on security in the buffer zone.

"Israel has shown maximum restraint. However,nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... Israel views the continued violations of the Separation of Forces agreement by the Syrian military forces with the utmost concern," Israel's U.N. ambassador Ron Prosor said.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.